While there are legitimate arguments to be made for the Alberta government’s Bill 24, no one should be under any illusion about the fact that the NDP is clearly trying to bait and trap newly elected United Conservative Party Leader Jason Kenney.

If the government is worried that schools might be outing kids by notifying parents about membership in a gay-straight alliance club, then the time to act on that was several months ago. It is no coincidence that this legislation comes right on the heels of Kenney’s victory in the UCP leadership race and right on the heels of an NDP advertisement highlighting Kenney’s “extreme policy” that would “force teachers to out gay students,” which misrepresents Kenney’s position.

What better way to prove their point than by ensuring that one of Kenney’s first acts as leader is to oppose legislation protecting students who join GSAs?

This master plan has one weakness, however — a weakness that if exploited, would initiate a catastrophic narrative collapse for the NDP: Jason Kenney supporting the legislation.

We don’t yet know, however, if Kenney will choose that option.

He did put out a statement last week, noting that “we will comment on Bill 24 after our caucus has had an opportunity to review it and discuss it.” That’s reasonable. Certainly, we should expect our politicians to know the details of the legislation they’re being asked to support.

What Kenney could have added to that statement, however, is something to the effect of, “but on the surface, we see no reason why we would oppose it.”

There’s clearly a hesitation on Kenney’s part, and it strongly implies opposition to this bill. For example: “We trust highly trained educators to use their professional judgment to make decisions in the best interests of children, particularly given that this policy applies to children as young as five years of age.”

It’s unclear where they get the idea of GSAs for five year olds, but the line suggests that they don’t believe Bill 24 is needed.

The legislation, however, does allow for certain exemptions where parents would be made aware of issues their child might be struggling with. If Kenney believes those are insufficient, it wouldn’t be unreasonable to propose amendments. That would be far wiser than making this a bigger issue than it needs to be, and playing directly into the narrative the NDP is trying to build around the UCP and its new leader.

Kenney’s statement also made this observation, which contains a fair amount of truth: “It is unfortunate that the NDP is using this sensitive matter as a partisan political wedge issue.”

But if this is being used as a political wedge issue, the most effective way to counter that it to not let it become one. It takes two to tango, as they say, and if the NDP are counting on the UCP to oppose this bill, the UCP would still need to play its part.

Why give them this gift? Why make this a bigger issue than it needs to be?

Politics in this province would be so much better served for the UCP to simply say, “We don’t necessarily support every word of this bill, but we are prepared to support it. Now, let’s move on to issues that really matter to Albertans.”

There may well be some social conservatives who say, “hang on, this matters to us.” But are those folks really going to abandon the UCP over this? Would they really risk another NDP term simply because of their discomfort over GSAs?

As the polls show, a lot of middle-of-the-road voters are certainly open to giving someone else a shot. There’s widespread frustration with the NDP’s economic policies, and so guess who benefits from changing the channel away from those issues?

The road to defeating the NDP does not run through the minefield of social issues. If Kenney hasn’t figured that out yet, he’ll learn it the hard way.

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